EDMUND RACK 



plant does not appear to be an object which, 

 under the present Parliamentary restrictions, can 

 be of public utility." We seem to have progressed 

 a little in this direction since then, as a company 

 has been formed to exploit the industry in this 

 country. Again, one of the subjects treated in 

 the Society's Journal so recently as 1911 was the 

 employment of oxen for draught purposes, and 

 this same subject was discussed by the Society 

 in 1784, when it was resolved to offer premiums 

 to encourage the use of oxen in husbandry. 

 Thomson, in his Seasons, written in the earlier 

 portion of the same century, puts on record the 

 then common practice in his lines referring to 

 the approach of Spring : 



" Joyous th' impatient husbandman perceives 

 Relenting Nature, and his lusty steers 

 Drives from their stalls, to where the well-us'd plough 

 Lies in the furrow, loosen' d from the frost." 



The Bath and West Society was founded in 

 1777 by Edmund Rack, a native of Norfolk, who 

 settled in Bath and took an active part in literary 

 and other movements here. There was an interest- 

 ing link during my own association with the 

 Society, joining up the past of Rack's day with 

 our own time, supplied by the late Sir Jerom 

 Murch, long an old and active member of the 

 Society's Council. In an article contributed by 

 him in 1881 to the Society's Journal, he says : 



" Everybody acquainted with that county 

 viz., Norfolk knows how well versed its culti- 

 vators were, and still are, in farming matters. 

 When I lived there sixty years ago Mr. Coke, 

 afterwards Earl of Leicester, was enjoying a green 



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